The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, made in 1919, probably remains the ultimate expression of narrative through set design; even the exquisitely chiseled face of Conrad Veidt seems cut to reflect the angled shadows and interiors through which he somnambulistically slips, under the control of the evil Caligari. The film's tableaux-like backgrounds emerged from the Der Sturm expressionist group which included painters Röhrig and Reimann and the designer Hermann Warm, all of whom contributed to the design. With roots in fantasy, romanticism, and medieval stories, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is also intensely modern, and like the best science fiction carries a warning for the future. Its chilling tale of mind control and murder was written by two men, Janowitz and Mayer, who shared a hatred for militarism and authoritarianism. A decade before Hitler's rise, the fictional Caligari wrote in his diary, "Now I shall be able to prove whether a somnambulist can be compelled to do things...he would never do himself and would abhor doing-whether it is true that one in a trance can be driven to murder." A prologue and epilogue attached at the insistence of producer Erich Pommer helped to re-route Janowitz and Mayer's charged political themes into a psychological (and pseudo-scientific) tale of personal madness.